DATABASES: SQL SERVER

Optimizing SQL Server 2005 Environments for Resiliency

Using VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows from Symantec s
Improving systems availability, scalability, management, and performance are key goals for every size enterprise. The VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows suite from Symantec helps meet these goals by providing common installation, configuration, and management tools to help optimize Microsoft SQL Server database environments. The Symantec suite is designed to enhance storage and application configurations while enabling online disaster recovery validation and testing.
BY KEVIN KNIGHT

Related Categories:
Database High availability (HA) Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Server consolidation Storage consolidation Storage software Symantec
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nterprises must contend with ever-increasing business challenges, regulations, and scrutiny. At the same

achieve high levels of data and application availability and enhance Microsoft SQL Server database performance. VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows is designed to support the Standard Edition and the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server, all versions of the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 operating systems including 64-bit versions, and virtual environments. This article also discusses how testing and validating a disaster recovery plan can help administrators ensure business continuity by using Storage Foundation HA for Windows to perform a fire drill that is designed to validate the production environment without affecting online applications.

time, customers expect information to be available at all times, and even a few minutes of downtime can be costly. Meeting stringent service-level agreements can be difficult without careful planning and wise IT investments. Traditionally, IT administrators have protected servers and applications by backing up data to tape. Although regular tape backups are essential, recovery-time objectives and recovery-point objectives cannot always be met by tape-based solutions alone. Today, Microsoft SQL Server administrators require a flexible, integrated backup system that helps reduce the time it takes to recover from data corruption or data center failures from hours or days to minutes. While unplanned outages are often unavoidable, administrators can enhance preparations for planned outages such as maintenance, patching, and disaster recovery validation and testing. This article explains how VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows from Symantec configured on Dell PowerEdge servers can help IT administrators

Designing a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 solution

With multiple versions available to suit any size enterprise, Microsoft SQL Server is fast becoming a database of choice for organizations around the world. VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows helps extend the core benefits of logical disk management that the Microsoft Windows OS provides. Additional features and capabilities
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DATABASES: SQL SERVER

can be enabled in Storage Foundation HA for Windows simply by A adding the appropriate license key. Before installing SQL Server, administrators should consider how databases will be placed on the underlying storage and how that storage can be configured both for performance and for fault tolerance. Microsoft provides specific recommendations and prescriptive architectures for many types of deployments; more information can be found at www.microsoft. com/sql/2005. In addition to database storage and performance issues, administrators

heavy use of the tempdb database, which may create a bottleneck if f SQL Server 2005 is not properly configured for the specific application. In addition, administrators should decide whether to create diskbased snapshots of the databases for quick recovery from accidental or malicious changes or from data corruption. Snapshot volumes can be created when configuring volumes for the application or at a later time when required and can be placed on a less-expensive storage tier than is required for high-performance applications. Figure 1 shows the typical disk layout for a simple SQL Server configuration based on the best practices just described. Following best practices for designing the SQL Server deployment, administrators can then take advantage of dynamic disk features. Dynamic disks allow the grouping of disk resources based on how those resources will be used, clustered, captured (as a snapshot), backed up, and so forth. In the base OS, only one disk group can be created, which prevents the use of advanced dynamic disk features such as clustering or off-host processing and backup. In the typical disk layout described in Figure 1, administrators can easily add volumes as necessary if data or logs grow larger than originally configured. Storage Foundation HA for Windows enables administrators to set automatic or manual volume growth, both of f which can take place while SQL Server remains online. Additionally, if certain data volumes experience performance problems, they can be moved to other locations to help reduce contention while SQL Server remains online. In Dynamic Disk Group 2 of the Figure 1 layout, two additional LUNs are used to enable quick recoveryone for storing snapshots of the database and one for storing snapshots of the logs. Administrators can perform such recoveries by using the snapshots to restore the desired volume(s) and rolling the logs forward if required (as in a database restore from backup). This approach enables recovery from a snapshot in minutes or even seconds, rather than in the hours typically required for tapebased recovery. Also, because the VERITAS FlashSnap capability is designed to make a complete copy of all data, the original data can be recovered to the point of the most current copy. Recovery can be performed from any node in a cluster, and logs can be used to recover to a specific point in time. In addition, on a shared SAN such as in
Location Local storage SAN Disk group Basic Disk Group Dynamic Disk Group 1 (minimum of 2 LUNs) Dynamic Disk Group 2 (minimum of 4 LUNs) Volume Volume 1 Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Drive letter C: S: T: U: L: N/A N/A Drive contents OS and SQL Server installation System databases Tempdb database User database User database logs Snapshot of database Snapshot of logs

In addition to database storage and performance issues, administrators should consider the importance of clustering and fault tolerance.

should consider the importance of clustering and fault tolerance. Will more systems and storage paths be required? Primary considerations for determining SQL Server architecture include the following:

What are the uptime and performance requirements for this application? How much data will reside on the server and how long will it take to back up and restore the data? After a failure, can the application be restored to production using tape backup alone in the time required? Could a second data center also host this application? If a second data center is available, what type of connectivity exists between sites?

Optimizing the storage configuration for SQL Server 2005

The example scenario in this article explains how a SQL Server system can be attached to a storage area network (SAN). In such an environment, administrators can use the Dynamic MultiPathing option available in VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows. This option is designed to provide fault tolerance for the Fibre Channel path between Dell servers and frequently used storage arrays, whether that path involves multiple Dell/EMC storage arrays or a heterogeneous storage environment. If a path to the array fails for any reason, this option is designed to help ensure that SQL Server will continue running without interruption. Administrators typically need to create logical units (LUNs) on the disk array once they have decided how to configure the underlying storage. In some cases, this decision will be made by the storage administrator or the array vendor. Administrators must determine the required size and the quantity of LUNs as well the RAID configuration. They must also consider how to separate the system databases from the user database volumes and where to place the logs and tempdb database. New features in SQL Server 2005 can make
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SAN

Figure 1. Typical SQL Server disk layout

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DATABASES: SQL SERVER

providing simple site migration or recovery from a central display, with the click of a mouse. For optimal performance when replicating SQL Server, the tempdb database should not be replicated to the remote cluster.

Testing and validation

Testing and validation are key requirements for most organizations today. Many enterprises are now required to perform complete lights-out tests of their production data centersin which a data center is actually shut down and recovery time is measured to help ensure that recovery procedures are sufficientas frequently as once per quarter. VCS provides a fire drill feature, which is designed to clone the production cluster and disk configuration and bring the clone online for validation on a standby serverwithout affecting online production applications and servers. By performing
Figure 2. VERITAS Cluster Server console showing cluster resource dependency for SQL Server 2005

such tests regularly, administrators can help ensure that downtime will be kept to a minimum when a real outage occurs.

a cluster environment, dynamic disk groups are designed to protect disks from being accessed by other systems on the SAN.

Enhancing SQL Server environments with VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows A
Many factors, planned and unplanned, affect information availability. By implementing VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows, organizations can benefit from a tool that is designed to build and optimize a resilient SQL Server system. Dell and Symantec are working together to enable a complete set of fully tested, integrated hardware and software solutions that are designed to provide high availability for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 environments. This scalable, easy-tomanage approachwhich includes VERITAS Cluster Server, the key component of VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windowsis well suited for medium- to large-size enterprises implementing SQL Server in their data centers. On-site planning and assistance are also available through Symantec professional services.

Clustering with VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows

Depending on the availability requirements of an application, administrators may also need to cluster SQL Server as well as any critical application that stores its data and depends on the SQL Server system. VERITAS Cluster Server (VCS) enables scalable, policy-based failover for up to 32 nodes in a single cluster and is designed to control startup and shutdown for multitier applications. Any-to-any failover is also supported. Because SQL Server 2005 is designed to scale up to 50 instances per server (SQL Server 2000 scaled up to only 16 instances), policybased failover and workload management can help ensure that critical applications get the appropriate server resources. In addition, this approach can enhance return on IT investments by helping to optimize server utilization. Figure 2 shows the VCS console in which cluster resource dependency for SQL Server 2005 is displayed.

Kevin Knight is a senior product manager at Symantec Corporation, where he focuses primarily on availability and disaster recovery solutions for enterprise applications on the Windows platform. Kevin frequently speaks at conferences as a subject-matter expert on Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server.
F OR M ORE INF ORM ATION

Geographically dispersed clusters for remote-site disaster recovery

When multiple data centers are involved, administrators may need to plan for site failure and recovery in a remote data center. For up to four connected cluster sites, VCS is designed to seamlessly fail over SQL Server resources from one node to anotherwhether at the local site or across the globe. The VERITAS Volume Replicator provides synchronous or asynchronous block-level replication over IP to move data from one site to another when the distance is too far for standard Fibre Channel to reach. VCS can manage this replication as well as many types of hardware-based replication while

Symantec: www.symantec.com VERITAS Storage Foundation for Windows from Symantec: www.veritas.com/Products/van?c=product&refId=31 Microsoft SQL Server 2005: www.microsoft.com/sql/2005 Dell and Symantec: www.dell.com/symantec

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November 2005